


You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast

by anythingbutgrief



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, M/M, Soulmates, True Love, this is a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 07:42:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutgrief/pseuds/anythingbutgrief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They used to have magic. Their family did, anyway, long ago, way before their mother and her family had come to this country, before the Yugoslav wars, before the state had existed to begin with. It was stronger before the Empire had fallen, before the first war, his great-grandmother used to murmur when he was little, rubbing her paper-dry hands together like she could conjure her lost magic back through the heat of friction, her wrinkled face bunched into a permanent scowl. Mickey was tiny then, couldn’t have been older than four or five, but he remembered wondering even then why Terry only glared at her from across the room instead of screaming at her to shut the fuck up, like he would have done if it had been Mickey’s mom doing the talking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for descriptions of blood and some mild gore (not literal but imagined).

They used to have magic. Their family did, anyway, long ago, way before their mother and her family had come to this country, before the Yugoslav wars, before the state had existed to begin with. It was stronger before the Empire had fallen, before the first war, his great-grandmother used to murmur when he was little, rubbing her paper-dry hands together like she could conjure her lost magic back through the heat of friction, her wrinkled face bunched into a permanent scowl. Mickey was tiny then, couldn’t have been older than four or five, but he remembered wondering even then why Terry only glared at her from across the room instead of screaming at her to shut the fuck up, like he would have done if it had been Mickey’s mom doing the talking.

 The little old lady was a shrunken shriveled doll of a person, limbs thinner than the cord of gray hair that hung down low from her head in a neat braid. Her eyes were black and small, almost hidden in the folds of her face, but they pierced through Mickey, cold and hot all at once, like a steaming piece of dry ice. “I could make flames in my hand, then. I could have burned down a forest, if I’d wanted to.” Mickey just stared at her; Mandy, in a tiny pile kneeling at her feet, nodded in rapturous attention, begging her to keep going. “My mother would take a fist of the soil to her nose and breathe in, and the weeds below would sink back to hell. She would lick the air on a dry day and the sky would open up, and the land would drink its fill. She would whisper things into the bread dough, and after supper the tax man would stumble from the farm coughing and holding his ribs.” The old lady’s gaze flashed to Terry, even as she continued to address Mandy. “That power is in your veins. Remember, Branimira.”

“That’s not her name,” Mickey said, instantly regretting the words when the woman’s eyes flicked down to him, imperious and distant even as she shifted her body toward him, claws digging into the arms of her chair to brace her weight forward. He knew it was stupid to talk back to the lady, but once, a year or two earlier, after Mickey kept tripping over the old lady’s name for his sister, the syllables slipping the grasp of his tongue, he tried to combine the two, holding his baby sister’s hands and muttering, “Brandy, Brandy” at her. That had set Terry off, yelling about he’d given Mandy her name for a reason, yelled about how Mama had gotten to name Mickey, and how Mandy was his, and that changing it now would be to dishonor the dead, and to dishonor _him_ , and so Mickey hid under his bed until his mother came to fetch him, cuddling his tiny body against her chest and whispering, “Just don’t call her anything but Mandy, okay, baby?”

The old lady opened her lips, and Mickey wanted to shrink from the near-toothless cave of her mouth “Not yet,” she said to him, eyes wide and amused. “But it will be.” Mickey felt his stomach twist sharply, and he wanted to run to his mom and hide behind her hips, but she wasn’t in the house now. His great-grandmother kept her eyes on him, mouth widening in some terrifying shape imitating a smile, so wide and dark Mickey imagined falling into it, eaten whole by the all-knowing, all-mocking woman across from him.

Mandy gently slapped her little fingers against the woman’s legs. “Tell me about the kissing thing! I want to hear it again!”

The old woman’s scowl slid back into place as she turned her face down to Mandy. “Why must you always hear about the mouth, Branimira? Don’t you want to hear of the blood and the bone and the gristle? Don’t you want to hear how we used to make men’s hearts freeze in their chests, not just seize up for us? Any fool can make a man’s heart beat faster. Don’t you want to hear how we used to make it stop?”

“Baba, it’s time for you to go to bed, don’t you think?” Mickey instantly felt the tension in his shoulders drop at the sound of his mother’s voice, but he resisted running to her, because Terry was still in the room, and he would at least say something mean about it, even if the old woman were in the room. His mother looked ragged and rough—black hair clinging to her red face, Pepto-Bismol pink waitress uniform sticking to her curves with sweat—but beautiful. Mickey wanted to wrap his arms her waist and breathe her in. He shifted so he could sit on his hands instead.

The old lady rolled her eyes and extended an arm, until his mother took it to guide her to her feet, walking her toward her room.

Minutes later, he followed her footsteps to his and Mandy’s room, waiting at the door and watching her wrap blankets around his younger sister. “Mama,” he heard Mandy whisper. “Tell me about the kissing thing again. Please.”

His mother sighed, and her head dropped between her shoulder blades. Mickey knew she was tired, tired of working, tired of talking, probably tired of them. He knew it and a part of him wanted to tell Mandy to shut up, stop believing everything that mean hag said, but the other part of him wanted to hear the words again, so he kept silent and stared at his mother’s back.

“It’s the power we still have, baby. We can’t do the things Baba talks about, not anymore, but we can know if our mates are right, if they’re really ours.”

“How?” Mandy prompted, even though she knew already.

“When you kiss, you will light up, like a firefly. He will, too. And no one else will see but you two.”

“And then we’re together forever?” Mandy whispered.

“Mm-hmmm,” their mother murmured, head shaking down into a nod. “You’ll be chained. His pain, will be your pain. You’ll be connected, like a cord wrapping around your chest and stretching toward him, wrapping around his. What moves him, moves you.” Mama’s voice had dropped to a whisper. Mickey looked behind him, down to the living room, but Terry was nowhere to be seen.

“Like when Mickey and I played telephone with the thread and the cups?”

“Yes!” she laughed in agreement, but the word sounded wet, and Mickey wondered if she was crying outright or if she was keeping the tears locked inside her eyes. She was getting so good at that now.

“But Mickey pulled too hard that one time and the thread snapped! What happens then? Because Mickey’s cup fell out the window.”

Mama was quiet for a long time, reaching her hand down to play slowly through Mandy’s hair. “Just the same. The same thing happens.”

“It tore a hole in my cup,” Mandy was slurring tiredly, the point of the conversation slipping from her mind in her exhaustion.

“Just the same,” Mama repeated, leaning down to peck Mandy on the forehead before turning to face Mickey. She didn’t look surprised to see him standing there, and he guessed she must have known he was listening to the whole time. She pointed at his bed, and Mickey immediately clambered inside but beckoned her to follow him with his hand.

She smiled as she pulled the blankets around him, and it looked genuine even with her wet eyes. He waited until she hovered above him for a kiss before whispering his question. “Is it really true, Mama?”

She nodded, putting her hand on his shoulder. Her flesh was cold, but heat burned through him at the touch, spreading out and burning out all of the hardness from his muscles, until he was relaxed and sleepy, blinking up at her with all of his power to keep his eyes open, and a part of him knew she had lied when she said the rest of their magic was gone. “Yes. But only if you kiss.” She reached her hand up to dash at her eyes and turned away. “Only if you kiss,” her voice repeated in his brain, and his last thought before falling asleep was that it sounded like a warning.

***

Mickey’s family had gone to the Roman Catholic church a couple of blocks from the neighborhood few times during his childhood:  Mandy’s baptism, one of his younger cousin’s, his uncle Joe getting married, and now, the last, his mother’s funeral. His mother’s Baba had been dead for years now, but he heard her voice as he stared at the red carpet where you knelt to take Communion, at the same red covering the altar. “Don’t you want to hear of the blood and the bone and the gristle?” His heart pounded in his chest like some ancient drumbeat, echoing down and down and down until it sang through him with the blood in his ears. His eyes bore down on the altar and he imagined, without meaning to, a similar one thousands of miles, hundreds of years away, with the same red, the same pulse beat singing through his mother’s people as they paid some sacrifice to something Mickey had no name for. In his mind his great-grandmother’s toothless face grinned at him and whispered words about how, in the old days, her line could spill enough magic to make blood pump for eternity. Mickey’s heart rate quieted at that, thinking of the cold body across the room. If there had ever been any such magic, it was gone now.

The casket was closed now; at the wake, at the house, it had been open. His mother’s face was everything it hadn’t been in life, smooth and unlined, as young as she really was, her mouth curving in a satisfied, sated smile. The stupid funeral director guy probably made it look that way, Mickey reasoned. Mickey looked at Terry's unsmiling face then, and he looked at him now. He was blank. Not happy, not victorious, but not distraught, either. He stared across with a loose jaw and a straight mouth and dry eyes. If he had any hole in his stomach from having his mother torn away from him, Mickey could not detect it. He had not had his cord snapped, that much was sure.

Next to him, Mandy whispered, “What are we going to do?” Mickey turned to look at her still-round face, bright red and lined with tracks where tears had dried. “Without her,” she added, as if Mickey was too dumb to figure it out.

Mickey shrugged but slowly moved his hand over to grab hers. She immediately squeezed it so hard it hurt, but he didn’t complain, just let her work her pain into him. “It’s you and me, right?” The amount of uncertainty in her voice pricked at his chest, cutting through him until he looked down at her hand and imagined it much smaller. When he nodded, she dropped her head to rest against his shoulder and the bones in her hands lost their tension without loosening her grip. Mickey leaned over and pressed his lips against her temple, quick, but not quickly enough to avoid Terry’s glaring at him with an edge in his eye Mickey couldn’t decipher.

Years later, when Mandy leaned against his shoulder and grasped his hand again, crying against him in the dark of his room, she would whisper, “It’s the cord thing. Because he lost Mom. He’s torn through, like she said happens. That’s why he…” Her voice hitched and she pressed her wet face farther into his shoulder.

“Why what?”

But she just shook her head.

***

 He didn’t know why he gave the gun back. Thanking him for the great fuck? It wasn’t like Gallagher hadn’t gotten off as hard as Mickey had. Paying him to keep his mouth shut? Ian would be just as dead as Mickey, and he knew enough about the kid to know he wasn’t that stupid.  So Mickey didn’t know why he did what he did—it wouldn’t be the first time. But his uncertainty was overtaken by terror when he saw Ian’s face move toward his, pure and intent. “Kiss me and I’ll cut your fucking tongue out,” he spat out, turning away even though he could picture Ian’s confused face in his mind. He thought of him shrugging it off, and somehow that made him feel sick, like he’d imbibed three gallons of sour milk in five minutes. His stomach unsteady, he dragged a fork through his plate of eggs instead of eating them, sneaking glances at his oblivious dad, looking for any sign that he really knew what he’d walked in on, but his face was blank as ever. Mickey thought about his face on the day of the funeral, and he almost wished he could run past Mandy into his room and kiss Gallagher, bite down hard on his lip and lick deep into his mouth, pulling back to see him flushed and panting and distinctly un-glowing, just so he could turn to Mandy and say, “See? Nothing. No such thing as magic.” The voice in his head turned mocking at that, asking him why he thought that would prove anything, unless he thought Ian could be his mate; the voice sounded like his great-grandmother, arrogant in its omniscience. He stuffed his mouth with eggs just to shut her up.

Weeks later, when Ian grabbed his hand mid-fuck, Mickey considered throwing him off for a millisecond, but his fist felt so insistent, so desperate that he let him grip onto him as hard as he wanted to, past the point of comfort. Mickey imagined a bonfire, a working heating system, a warm bowl of soup made by his mother, centered the sensation in his mind even as he felt Ian speed up, let it gather gradually into his hand like single drops of rain pooling into a puddle, and imagined the warmth seeping from his hand to Ian’s. He heard a sharp gasp behind him, then a deeper sigh. “Thank you,” Gallagher whispered into his ear. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” and fucked him harder.

***

“I gotta get home,” Ian panted against his neck before pulling back, the light from the nearest streetlamp catching onto his skin so that he looked lit up, like one of those tall white taper candles.

“Awwwww, you gonna miss your curfew?” Mickey taunted, before pulling Ian forward again by his belt. “Fuck me, come on.”

Ian laughed right in his ear. “You couldn’t have been like this before we left the store?” He wrapped his hands around Mickey’s waist, shoving their crotches together and laughing again at Mickey’s groan. Mickey wanted to swallow that sound, wanted to silence Ian with his lips and steal his breath until he couldn’t make any more sound, not until Mickey wanted him to. He bit into the flesh of his neck instead, tasting the salt of his skin.  It didn’t taste sweet, but he wanted more of it anyway; he pictured walking into the ocean, a drowning man pulled forward by the sea and then spat out, over and over again, lungs full of it, drenched through, both consuming and consumed.

Ian whimpered. Mickey wanted to laugh at him for it, wanted to think of the noise as pathetic and weak, but instead his hand came up to cradle Ian’s head closer, deeper into his own neck. He didn’t understand how this boy, this simple skinny boy who looked like he’d just wandered off the farm, could make him feel so full and so hungry all at once. “Someone could walk by the alley,” Ian whispered against his ear, breath tickling the nerves there. Mickey tightened his grasp on the back of Ian’s neck and used it to drag him along as he walked them deeper into the shadows, shrouded by the darkness. He had a few beers at work today and they were loosening his throat, making him frighteningly unafraid. “What do you want?” he heard himself asking Gallagher, voice hoarse and low.

Ian’s eyes dropped to Mickey’s mouth and lingered there, and his tongue came out to lick at his own, but he didn’t say anything. Mickey hated that he wouldn’t say anything. It would be better if Ian pushed it, if Ian demanded kisses or tried to do it without permission, because then Mickey would have license to shove him away, tell him to stop being such a pussy and a girl, get him to leave him alone and not taunt him with unspoken promises of things Mickey would never, ever get to have. Instead Ian was so patient, so understanding, so fucking sweet. Stupid Gallagher. Stupid ocean, cradling him with its rocking waves instead of suffocating him with its wrath. Stupid drowned man. Just stay on the sand, and no matter how much it burns your feet, don’t go into the water. Just keep running. God, he was drunk.

Ian kept staring at him, hands coming up to thumb gently at his collarbone and shoulders, careful like he was going to break. He leaned forward a moment later, pressed against Mickey’s neck again. “This. Just this,” he whispered, barely audibly. Mickey’s mouth went dry, parched and silently begging for something he couldn’t have. He brought his hands up to press insistently against Ian’s back, arching into his touch as his pants were undone and his underwear pulled down. Ian bent his spine so that their groins were level and took them both into his own hands, thrusting slowly in time with him.

Mickey didn’t want to think about how gentle it was, how the veins in Ian’s neck thrummed with energy, how his jaw cut into the night like a blade—how Ian could cut him in two if he wanted to, if Mickey would only slip a few inches down and catch that mouth with his own, how his hair was just the perfect shade of red, just the perfect altar for Mickey to lay his heart down in solemn, still sacrifice. He screwed his eyes shut and saw his great-grandmother, as a young woman, standing in an open field, her black hair hanging down in thick strips, hands torn bloody and offered to the sky, head thrown back and mouth thrown open in a sound somewhere between a laugh and a howl. He felt Ian rock against him harder and the image behind his eyes shuttered, once, twice, and then it was Mickey with the bleeding, stinging hands, his own voice making the triumphant wail in his mind. He blindly reached a hand down to touch Ian’s, felt him tighten his grasp, and came with a quiet grunt. Behind his eyelids, the imaginary Mickey had stopped screaming and looked down at his hands with a grimace, absorbed in his own pain until Ian approached, taking Mickey’s hands in his own and kissing the open wounds. Mickey opened his eyes and saw before he could feel Ian holding one of his hands, licking away the stray spots of come that had landed there.

“You taste good,” Ian said, smiling before dropping his hand. Mickey shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall, imagining Ian with lips stained red from Mickey’s blood. Mickey felt an ache in his chest and looked down, in his mind, to see a hole in his chest, slowly and steadily bleeding out. He saw tiny strands of deep orange muscle underneath his nails, and when he looked up imaginary Ian licked his lips and smiled without malice. “You taste good,” he heard again, this time only in his mind. He opened his eyes to see Ian smiling that same smile, the same exact one, fond and grateful. _I’d give it to you_ , Mickey realized, _if you asked_ , heart pounding so hard at the thought that he wasn’t sure if it was from fear or desire to escape to its real owner. He licked his own lips and tucked himself back into his pants, saying instead, “That’s good to know.”

He was still pleasantly buzzed when he walked in on Mandy holding her head in her hands, knees pulled tight against her chest. “It didn’t work,” she mumbled. “On Lip. It didn’t work.”

He didn’t have to ask, but he did anyway. “The cord?”

“No cord,” she said, almost in sing-song, laughing without humor before adding, “Of course no cord. When I met Ian, I thought…maybe, it would be him, and it didn’t work. Then…Lip, and maybe finally it would happen. I would kiss him and it would work but…” She shrugged. “I guess there is just something wrong with me.”

Mickey sat down next to her. “Don’t be an idiot. Mom just lied.”

“No, she didn’t!” Mandy hissed. “She had magic. You _know_ she had magic.”

Mickey rolled his eyes, though the effort was lost in the dark. “So what? So what if there’s no fucking cord between you and that asshole. That the only reason you kissed him? ‘Cause you thought it’d make him never leave you?”

“No?” The unsure tone of her voice made it come out like a question, but Mickey ignored that.

“So keep fucking him, then. It’s not like the stupid cord thing works even if it is real.”

“It _is_ re—”

“Listen to me! It doesn’t fucking matter, Mandy. If it’s real, then it didn’t do Mom any good, right? Her and dad, they had it. It’s not like they were any fucking fairy tale.”

Mandy sniffed, rubbing her nose on her sleeve. “Yeah,” she said after a few seconds more of silence.

He stared at her nodding and wished he could convince himself that it didn’t matter. He considered for a moment what it would feel like, if he kissed Gallagher and nothing happened, if the action wouldn’t bury him deep under the boy’s skin, if it wouldn’t let him be a part of him forever. He knew without asking that for Mandy, there was always that “What if” at the edge of her mind, some formless shadow figure standing in for a mate she had never met. But if he kissed Ian, he knew there wouldn’t be that question. Instead he’d have to confront the reality that he’d always known, that he didn’t have any magic, that there was nothing to be adored in him. There was nothing of his mother in him. He was just Terry Milkovich’s son, who didn’t know any love spells.

He would not kiss Ian. Whatever type of glamor the universe had slipped over Ian’s eyes, Mickey would not be there to witness when it disappeared. He would not pull away from his mouth and watch his face go blank. He would not kiss Ian.

Months later, he tossed back and forth on his cot in juvie, his last words to Ian rising and falling in his head like a ball in the air. “Just a warm mouth to me.” He tried to shake the image of Ian’s wet eyes out of his head. He forced himself to picture Ian smiling instead, and the image came all at once, his mouth open wide, red and warm, so warm, with Mickey’s blood.

Mickey didn’t question why the thought lulled him to sleep.

***

“He isn’t afraid to kiss me.”

“I ain’t afraid, Gallagher,” he wanted to spit out at him. “I just don’t want to.” It’s what he should have said, what he planned to say when he imagined this moment in his head, although when he imagined the scene Ian had been more insistent, demanding rather than explaining something. He swallowed the words instead and looked at Ian, imagining that old fuck getting to kiss him, imagining Ian smiling and content as he pulled away. _I’m not afraid_ , he thought. _I’m fucking terrified._

Looking back on it, he wouldn’t be able to tell when he’d made the decision to do it. Halfway up the path to the doctor’s door, maybe; or two seconds before it happened, as if he’d run back to the van under the delusion that he just wanted to steal Ian’s cigarette from his lips; or right when Ian indirectly accused him of being afraid; or when Ian had smiled that dream smile under the school bleachers; or when he came to his door, needing Mickey, wanting Mickey, his face panicked and pained and beautiful; or eighteen months earlier, when Ian leaned toward him after seeing the gun; or all at once. It wasn’t a decision at all, really. His body had done it, legs carried him back to the van, already trembling but sure of their purpose. But his mind still knew what was happening, feeling the way his heart jumped into his throat seconds before, and he thought to himself, like the coward he was, “Fuck it. I’ll do it and I’ll prove it’s nothing and then the whole thing will be over.” He savored, for the millisecond it lasted, that dream of peace, that dreamless sleep, that numb living coma that he imagined as a post-Ian life. “It’ll be over and I can go back to feeling nothing,” he thought, and his lips brushed Ian’s, and every nerve in his body lit itself on fire. He quickly turned away, but Ian shone, brighter than usual, even, so bright it made his eyes water and the hairs on his arm stand at attention.

He flipped him off for good measure, because his chest was aching at the widening distance between their bodies, was telling him to run back and bend toward Ian’s smile like a malnourished weed in sunlight. Little fucker already pulling on him, he needed to be told to go fuck himself. It was just a bonus that it allowed him to turn his body back to look at Ian shining like the first and last star in a moonless night.

His mother had been right. He was magic.

He shook his head at that and grinned once he got inside the house. No, that wasn’t quite right. _They_ were magic—him and Ian. He could still see Ian’s smile in his head and he knew he wasn’t imagining it this time.

So it was Ian’s fault, really, for the old lady waking up, for making Mickey stupid enough to think they could lift the huge clock. He had convinced Mickey he could do anything, with that soul-fire burning through him still. He’d made Ian Gallagher his, after all. How the fuck could stealing a clock be a challenge to him?

An hour later, when he was still bleeding on the Gallaghers’ kitchen counter, the only sensation rivaling the pain in his ass was the sick ache of Ian’s worry bearing down on him like a rock on his back. Even later, doped up on the pills Dr. Fuckhead had in his bag, his entire core would shake with the effort of not running to him. At first Mickey just thought it meant he missed him, but when he closed his eyes and centered on the sensation, picturing Ian, he saw his face drawn with stress and fear, felt his concern about Debbie and Carl and Liam stab at his thoughts and his trepidation as he looked over his shoulders at the other boys in the group home, the fear slinking through his body like a slow, determined snake.

He wished his mother had taught him more about how to make things happen. What did witches do? Were spells just like prayers? Who did he pray to? He thought of his mother’s Baba, of her words about blood and bone and gristle again, imagined a thousand sacrifices on a thousand altars for a thousand sunrises. You had to pay for things. Mickey didn’t know anything about magic, but he knew how the world worked, and he figured this was no different. You pay with pain. Mickey committed to the ache in his chest, let that sensation fill him until he couldn’t think of anything else, and whispered under his breath. “Please let me help him. Please let me help him. Please let me help him. Please. Please. Please.”

“So you got shot again, huh?” His dad’s voice snapped his eyes open and his mouth shut. Terry wore a disdainful expression, looking down at him with something between amusement and disbelief. “Got a call from your cousin a minute ago. He needs us to do a pick-up out-of-state. Guess it’s just going to be me and your brothers now, though, huh?” Mickey shrugged. “Fucking useless,” Terry muttered before turning away from him. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard that, and he knew it probably wouldn’t be the last, but he’d never felt more grateful. “Thank you,” he whispered once his father was out of range. He didn’t know he who he was addressing, a god or goddess or group of them, or his own family, his mother and her mother and hers and so on, for giving him this gift. “Thank you.”

***

He should have known better. Mickey made the mistake of assuming the world had known him as well as he knew the world, that whatever power he’d whispered his wish into would realize the amount of effort it had taken to do that, the amount of energy he’d pooled into making the request at all, how much of himself he had to restrain to enable faith to take over for a few moments. The world didn’t know that, or the world didn’t care. Its payment would always be in blood, he was sure now. He had traded everything for one sweet night. But the line around his chest tugged at him when he attempted regret. He wouldn’t give that night back, he couldn’t. He couldn’t give up the way Ian looked at him, the way Ian’s lips had ghosted over the back of his neck when they fucked, the way his body had curled protectively around Mickey while they slept.

 His father would always find out. He would always tear him from his lifeline, mangle him on the inside as on the out. He was always going to kill him. Mickey knew that, he figured he’d always known that, just as he always knew he was going to kiss Ian. He could picture this moment, and that moment, happening over and over again, a thousand different times, a thousand different ways, a thousand sacrifices for a thousand bloody sunrises, ending in the same cold night. There was nothing to be done, but to huddle around the memory of Ian’s smile like the last fire in the universe. It made his chest burn, in a bad way, he guessed, meant to tell him to go get Ian, to not spend any more time without him. It made Mickey want to laugh at himself; it made him want to smash his own head in with a hammer. He had been afraid that there would be no magic from the kiss, that he would not be able to tie himself to Ian. Oh, this was worse, so much worse. He felt him across the neighborhood, worrying and suffering and, worst of all, hoping that Mickey would be okay if given some time alone.

He could never see him again, never let the magic rip his guts again and bare him for what he was, torn open, as a wasted sacrifice. He pictured Ian’s face as she—as what happened was happening. Just a rotted carcass under the sun, riddled with maggots, giving Ian no life, none at all. He could never kiss him again.

He felt the weight of the lie on his tongue, but he swallowed it anyway. It felt good to pretend he didn’t know how this ends.

***

He kissed him again, like he knew he would, but not because he knew he would. He did it because he wanted to. Mickey could have blamed the traitor in his chest, the line tugging him toward Ian with every breath, but he didn’t want to. This moment could be his own. He hadn’t begged anyone for it, hadn’t pledged any worthless sacrifice for it, didn’t owe the opportunity to his mother or his father or his sister or to anything but the grace of Ian Gallagher, wanting him when he had no business to. “Don’t do this,” Ian said, so softly it was almost under his breath. For a second Mickey could do nothing but stare at him and breathe, that alone taking up so much energy he thought he was going to pass out, so exhausted and split apart by this boy, who burst in so stupidly, so bravely, this fucker who managed to look so defeated and so strong in the same moment, who had the audacity to beg Mickey to give more of himself when he’d already bled out for him. But he wanted to give it to him, maybe because Ian wanted it, but more to prove that he was still his own possession, he was still his own to give away. And if Ian had him, then no one else could take Mickey away from Mickey. He ignored the voice in his head that said that it didn’t work that way, that there’s always something that can be stolen. “Shut up, Baba,” he thought to himself, and shot up like a rebellious seed from the ground, pushing against Ian’s lips and feeling that delicious burn again, that fire that could obliterate him if he let it. He wanted to let it.

***

“I didn’t come here for you.” _He was always going to leave_ , he told himself. _You knew this was going to happen. You knew the tether would snap. You knew it the whole time. When you said, “Kiss me and I’ll cut your fucking tongue out,” what you meant was “Kiss me and you’ll cut mine out.” You knew it._ It didn’t stop him from begging, in his way, it didn’t stop him from feeling like his body was being forced through level after level of solid rock, wringing tears out of his body as though all his blood had already been used up.

The ache in his chest got sharper the next morning, and sharper still as the hours wore on and Ian went further from him. “His pain, will be your pain,” his mother had said. “What moves him, moves you.” He had never bothered to ask her if it went both ways, if what moved Mickey would move his lover, because he had never planned on finding out. No kissing, not ever, that was the deal, and so he hadn’t asked his mother about the specific mechanics, if his mate would feel like his entire torso had been blown apart if the cord between them stretched too far. Ian had no magic, at least no magic divorced from the way his eyes would glitter after he came, no magic save for the way he burned through Mickey’s defenses with his touch, no magic save for the gift of stupidity that had allowed him to look at Mickey and see something other than dirt. Without him, Ian could walk around, whole, would kiss without the expectation of setting off bombs with his lips, would never feel like something was yanking him across continents, yanking him home. Mickey should have known. Maybe he _had_ known. He pictured his dad’s face at the funeral again, practically unbothered by the whole affair, more annoyed at making the effort than anything else. Mickey wanted to throw up. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to scream at his mother, wanted to pass her a cigarette and share a wry smile as he shared his knowledge of her secret. The only power they had, really, was the ability to love more deeply than they could be loved back.

***

He hadn’t noticed that Mandy settled next to him on the porch until he heard her contained whisper. “Did you kiss him?”

Mickey just looked at her and handed his beer over without a word. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered, chugging from the bottle until it was drained.

“Ay! You know you’re going to get me a new one, right?”

Mandy rolled her eyes at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Mickey shrugged and lit a cigarette. “What good would that have done?”

She slapped him on the back of his head for that, but not hard, and it made Mickey smile, even as she began to speak in a low, harsh whisper. “Fucking dumbass. I could have helped you, you know.”

“Helped me how?” Mickey couldn’t keep the amusement from seeping into his voice. She was always going to be his silly little sister, in some way, who colored outside of the lines and dreamed of knights in shining armor and put bright highlights in her hair to make herself feel better. Of course she would think she could help him. It was cute, really.

“Uh, I could have convinced Jamie and Tony and Iggy to help you. Could have gotten Dad to calm down.” Mickey scoffed at that, but she just hardened her jaw and kept going. “Could have gotten Ian to stay.”

He shook his head. “What’s going to happen, happens, Mandy. You can’t change things.”

She grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her. “Not to _us_.” She stared at him, her gaze commanding and cutting in a way that made Mickey want to tear his eyes away, but he didn’t. “Not to us, fucker. It’s you and me, remember?” She reached into the pocket of her jeans, pulling out a bundle of photos. “Look. I found these in Mom’s old stuff yesterday.”

At the top of the stack was one of the two of them, very little, Mandy halfway sitting on Mickey’s lap, Mickey holding her tiny hands in his and sticking his tongue out at her. Mickey laughed at the image, ignoring the way his throat cracked with the effort of making the noise, and held the edges of the picture gently between his fingers like a delicate petal. Mandy moved closer and nudged his shoulder gently. “Look at the other side.”

He flipped it over and read his mother’s neat handwriting: Mickey and “Brandy,” 1999.

Mickey’s laugh grew louder, less strained, feeling that part of himself that had so adored his mother start to stake its claim on new places of his mind and heart. He was starting to feel warm all over, in fact, and calm and safe in ways he hadn’t since…

He turned and saw Mandy’s hand resting gently on his shoulder, pressing down just hard enough to send the feeling through him. He welcomed the sweet sensation seeping from her hand to his shoulder, so much like the warmth of whiskey in his belly, but spreading throughout his whole body. He let it sink through him for a second, just a second, because he was under no illusions that he was anything but weak, but after that he pushed her hand away. “No, don’t fucking do that to me, Mandy. I don’t want it.”

“You’ve been a mess of nerves and stress for weeks, dick. It’s pissing me off to look at, so let me help you relax.” He shook his head and moved a few inches away from her. “What, you want the pain?”

“Yes,” he answered immediately, his voice strong in its confidence. He hadn’t even had to think about it.

“Why, you think you deserve it?” Mickey sucked hard on the cigarette, deferring a response. “Jesus, you know I was fucking wrong when I called you a pussy, right? You can’t take half of what I say seriously, asshole, you know that.” Mickey smiled around his smoke but didn’t answer yet. “Look, it’s not your fault, okay? So let me help you.”

Mickey shook his head. “It’s not—it’s not just that. I….” He grimaced and flicked the cigarette off the porch, expecting her to interrupt him or supply words for him. She didn’t. “It hurts, yeah, but it’s…it’s him, you know? I’ll be doing nothing and all of a sudden my chest will hurt like a bitch, but it’s because he’s done something or felt something or moved somewhere. It’s because of him.” He paused again, feeling her gaze on him but not having the bravery to look at her and talk at the same time. “I want the pain. It’s mine.”

Mandy was quiet for another few moments before moving the stack of photos closer to him. “Keep looking.” Mickey slipped the first one to the back of the stack and grinned down at a picture of Baba glaring at the camera. “This fucking crazy bitch,” he muttered, but it sounded like a term of endearment. Mandy laughed and nodded at him to continue.  One of their older brothers playing in dirt in the front yard, one of Mandy in a cheap pink princess dress, grinning up at her mother behind the camera, one of all of the kids grouped around the swingset at a park, Mickey’s hand clenched around Mandy’s again. Mickey stopped moving his hand when he reached the next one, of some place he wasn’t sure he’d ever been in his life. It looked like the inside of a restaurant; his mother stood in the center in a pale blue uniform that Mickey didn’t remember. This one brought out her eyes in ways the ugly pink one from his memory never did, but there was some other source of light in her, from her eyes and her smile and her skin, that he couldn’t quantify. She looked up at the man standing next to her, biting the left side of her mouth the tiniest bit through her smile. The man was tall, with brown hair, but Mickey couldn’t tell much else from the angle, with only one side of his face turned toward the camera, showing a sharp nose and a smile to match his mother’s. His hand was drawn to the picture, fingers moving slowly to touch his mother’s face like he could have felt her smile through the paper.

“I looked at that, and I thought….” Mandy’s voice almost startled him; he had been so drawn into the picture that he’d nearly forgotten she was there. “Have you ever seen her so happy?”

He shook his head slowly, still mesmerized. “Do you know who…?” Mandy gestured with her fingers to flip the picture over. On the other side, his mother’s script wrote: Max, 1998.

“Max,” Mickey murmured, as if saying the name out loud would invoke some knowledge of him.

“Do you think….” Mandy trailed off again and scowled at herself, obviously frustrated. Mickey didn’t prompt her but just waited, somehow patient even as his blood started to pump faster. “I mean, obviously I wouldn’t know, but since you….since you and Ian….do you think? I mean, can you tell?”

“Did they have a cord,” Mickey finally supplied, but he didn’t phrase it like a question. He licked his lips even though his mouth felt dry and looked back down at the pair in the picture. And they were a pair, he could see that clearly. She looked up at him like the way women did in the movies, after the hero had defeated the bad men with guns and saved the day. She looked at him like she wanted to kiss him, and like she already knew what it would feel like when she did.

“So…..she cheated on Dad,” Mandy said, but without a trace of accusation to her voice.

Mickey swallowed, unable to tear his eyes away from the picture. “Guess so.” 

“So, she and Dad never had a cord, then.”

Mickey shook his head, scanning over the picture and noticing that his mother wore no ring on either hand. “I guess….I mean, we’d have to ask someone who would know, like Baba, to know for sure, but…”

“I thought you would be able to know. Could you have a cord with anyone else?” There was a slight edge to Mandy’s voice now, some hint of urgency hidden behind annoyance that just made Mickey feel more nervous. He tore himself away from the picture to look at her, feeling his pulse pound in his throat without knowing why. “Answer the question, Mickey, could you have another mate like Ian?”

Mickey didn’t have the words to answer, nor the words to tell her how cruel the question was. “Fuck off,” he said instead.

“So that’s a no.” He had anticipated a lecture on his failures, on how precious and beautiful Ian was, how lucky Mickey was, how selfish he’d been, how he didn’t deserve Ian when people like her were so alone and unloved. He hadn’t anticipated hearing her voice break. “So that means…um, that means that Terry’s just the way he is because that’s the way he is, huh?”

“What?” Mickey turned to see her, visibly shaking, trying to brace herself by pushing her fists down hard onto the wood of the porch, head hanging down to avoid his gaze.

“Like all this time I thought, it’s because his cord snapped, you know? That’s why he does what he does to us, because he’s got a hole blown through him where Mama should be, but if he never had the cord, then he’s just….he’s just…”

Mickey’s own chest started to vibrate painfully. “Just what, Mandy?” The softness of his own voice scared him.

She shook her head at him, angry, and he didn’t know if it was all aimed at his father or for Mickey for not knowing the missing word. “Doesn’t matter. All this time, all these fucking years I kept myself from hating him like a goddamn fool, forgiving him, making excuses for him, thinking that he was in so much more pain than I was….All this time I could have been bleeding him dry and I let him do it to me instead.” Mandy fisted her hands together so hard that her nails dug in and drew back red.

“Mandy, you didn’t—you can’t…” Blame yourself? Kill him? Do it without me?

“What would you know about what I can do?” Her voice had gone deeper, stronger, and her eyes burned through him, blue eyes looking black, like coal, like fuel, like the round wholeness of her now perfect rage, brought to the surface.

He grabbed for her hands and clenched tight. “Mandy, Mandy, it’s okay, I’m here.” He squeezed harder and tried to think of peaceful things to send to her, sweet childhood memories to soothe her panic, but all that he could think of was her hand in his, just like this. He had expected her to go limp, full of compassion again, but her grip hardened, and he felt her tear into his skin, felt his heartbeat slow to match hers as their blood mingled in the hot place between their flesh, steady and certain. When she pulled away and looked straight into his face, the rage in her eyes had not dimmed, but she looked calm and sure. “It’s okay?” Mickey had meant to sound reassuring again, but it came out like a question.

She nodded. “It _is_ okay, Mickey. I know that now.” He should have felt unsettled by the tone her voice, should have asked her what she meant by that, should have told to stop being weird, she was sounding like that bitch Baba, but he didn’t, because his blood pumped alongside hers, to the same purpose. If Mandy said they were going to be okay, they were going to be okay. She pointed down at the picture. “Wonder where he is.”

Mickey was all fit to shrug, but he looked back down at the photo and saw that unmistakable glint in his mother’s eye, like she had discovered gold for the first time in the face of the man. “We should find him.”

“How do you figure we do that?”

Mickey shrugged and stood to his feet, offering his still-stinging hand to his sister again and pulling her up, feeling an uncomfortable jolt surge through his body when she tightened her grasp. With his other hand he placed the picture of his smiling, chained mother in his front pocket and imagined (or felt, he couldn’t tell the difference anymore) that it sent a pleasant cloud of heat move through his clothes and guide his muscles into moving. “Together, I guess,” he said, but there wasn’t any doubt in his voice.

They walked without thought, without speech, but with purpose, legs carrying them in the same direction around every corner, passing by street after street hand-in-hand, until the night deepened past blue, past orange, past purple, to black.

The walk didn’t even take them out of Chicago, didn’t even take them out of the South Side. Mickey had half-expected to be led into the traffic of the highway, or to come to a tombstone with letters faded under rain. Instead they walked into a bar, pushed past staring patrons, and came to a stop at the far end of the bar, staring at the stringy man ushering whiskey into his mouth with his head slumped down between his shoulders.

The man turned, like he’d felt his gaze on his back, and his eyes lit up from drained, dark, to alivewith recognition when he saw them. “Are you--? You’re—” He stumbled to his feet and tripped with the effort, catching himself against the wall with one bony, lined arm. Mandy broke from Mickey’s grasp to steady him, her strong hands braced against his shoulder and chest to bring him up straight to full height. The man’s face was drawn, somehow both thin and hollow and sagging, skin gone sallow, beard tangled and patchy like a field turned entirely to weeds, fingernails clogged with dirt, arms torn crisscrossed with scars from too many needles. And yet…he was their mother’s mate, and Mickey looked at it him and thought him beautiful. “Max,” he said, and the smile that stretched itself slowly open on his face hurt with its intensity.

Max nodded, and he smiled back, but Mickey saw stains on his chest that nobody else in the room could see, large circular shadows of soul-blood hanging down from ten thousand nights of emptiness, bleeding out from the same unhealed gash over and over, the scars on his chest wrapping around each other like lines on a tree stump. “Just the same,” his mother whispered to him, from the past, from his mind, that place inside him where she still lived. Max had a hole torn through him, just as one ripped itself through his mother. The pain his mother had felt was written in invisible braille on this man’s chest, like she had carved a book into him with her tears. And Max had no magic. None at all, just like Ian. Mickey blinked, once, twice, then saw Ian behind his eyes, crouching in an open field, crying and looking at down at the mangled mess where his chest should be. Mickey opened his eyes, saw Max staring at him, his eyes so happy, like he had been waiting desperately for this moment for fifteen years, and Mickey bent to throw up.

Mickey had never imagined what it would feel like to realize he was loved, hadn’t seen the point in dreaming up images of something that would never happen. But if he had, Mickey thought now, he would have thought it would feel like being held to his mother’s chest, hidden from his father’s eyes, or like childbirth in reverse, or being so high he didn’t have to think about the fact that he took up mass, that he existed. Instead he felt like the drowned man again, only this time he was sputtering the salt water out of his mouth and nose, spraying it in a million directions, his chin barely braced above the water, as he stood on Ian’s head, shoving him under. The image sent another shock of pain through his chest. _Ian felt that_ , he thought, and then another, _and that one_ , and then another, and so on. The more he fought to hold on to something soft and gentle, the more he caught on the sharp corners of his life, impaled a thousand times with a thousand moments over the past months he’d sent his pain to his lover. He’d held on to his pain like the last soldier wielding a soaked, shredded flag, when really he had been staking his claim into the sensitive soil of Ian’s heart, stabbing him a thousand times with every thought of love.

He felt Mandy’s hands hovering over his body, unsure. “Mandy, heal me,” he wheezed out. “Heal me! Do it! Do it! Mandy! Mandy, heal me!”

“I thought you said—”

“I was wrong! Heal me! Do it! It’s hurting him, Mandy, you have to--” The panic surged around him like a black wave, like an endless line of honeyless bees buzzing in his ear, like his entire body was being converted to static. He heard Mandy’s voice and felt her touch, searing hot on his skin, but Ian’s heartbeat rocked against his chest, knocking against him like a hungry neighbor, and he answered it. He fell into the darkness enclosing him and didn’t expect to be caught, didn’t expect sharp papery hands to brace themselves against his back and dig into his skin with ten insistent knives of nails.

***

The first thought he had, when he could think thoughts, when the surrounding buzz cleared enough for that, until the haze around him was gray and cloudy instead of merciless black, was that of course it was her. It had to be her.

Baba grinned at him as she licked her nails clean. “Welcome home, Ljubo.”

“That’s not my name,” he said.

She smiled wider, eyes glinting like some precious murderous metal. “Isn’t it?” She reached forward and raked her still-wet nails across his face, just enough to make it sting. “What are you but love?” The pain grounded him, made the fog dissipate further, and when he blinked he could see past his great-grandmother, see into his own living room, his own body lying on the couch, his hands folded neatly above his heart like a saint in one of those church paintings. His chest twitched feebly at the sight, and he felt a pang of panic, at how quiet and still his chest felt, as though Ian weren’t pulling insistently at it from the opposite line. “Where is he?” he whispered.

Baba’s monstrous cave of a mouth fell open wider at that, and he thought for a moment that he was going to be swallowed by darkness again, this time literally eaten whole by his great-grandmother, but she tossed her head back instead and laughed that vision laugh, half-pain and half-joy. “Silly eager boy, silly fool,” she laughed at him, but the words warmed him, and he understood them as a compliment, in her own way. “And yet you deny the name I give you.” She smiled again, metal-eyes gone warm. “Soon for that. But first look.”

Mickey peered back into his living room, saw his father glance at his body and grunt at Mandy to have him moved. The scene zoomed forward, so that he could see Mandy standing in the kitchen. “In a minute, Dad. I’m making you something.” Terry grunted in annoyance. “It’s going to taste great, I promise.” Mandy turned back to the stove, threaded her fingers through thick white bread dough, slipping her hands through it thoroughly and carefully like she was sending sweet warmth into somebody’s tense muscles. She did that for a minute more, and then then she bent toward the stove, pulling her hair from her face. Mickey heard her whisper into the dough, “He will never hurt me or my brother again. He will never hurt me or my brother again. He will never hurt us again” and watched her brush her lips against the bread like a kiss, like a thank-you. Beside him, Baba spoke, voice thin. “Did I not tell you that I knew your sister’s name?” The old woman’s eyes were wet, for the first time, softened back to blue from black. He turned back to Mandy, straight-backed and calm as she put the plate down before their father, watched the way his face fell as he chewed, the way the color faded from his cheeks after swallowing, the way he stumbled to his feet, clutching at his ribs like they were slipping from his body. “I’m going out,” he sputtered between coughs, tripping toward the door, toward some dark alley, some dark end. Mandy followed him to the door, shutting and locking it behind him, and turned toward Mickey, bending down to press a gentle palm against his forehead. Here, in the gray haze, Mickey felt her touch send gentle sparks through him.

Baba waited until the sensation disappeared, then grabbed his hand and tugged him forward, insistently rather than gently. “Come on. That’s your sister’s home. Go see yours.” He stumbled through the thick fog in the direction she indicated, walking in a straight line as if being pulled inexorably forward by a line, straining his eyes until they hurt, until the edges of a doorway appeared, and he stumbled his way inside. He thought that it had been hard to breathe outside, in the haze, but there was no air in here to choke on, not with Ian standing across the room from him, hands pressed against his own chest, invisible lines over his heart blinking on and off until Mickey closed the space between them.

He thought for a minute, stupidly, arrogantly, that he was dreaming, that he had drawn some vivid blow-up doll to stand in for Ian with his own mind, but the boy slipped his hand down to cup Mickey’s cheek, solid and real, and stronger than Mickey’s magic would ever be. “God, I hate you,” Ian whispered, slipping his mouth against Mickey’s. “You’re so fucking stupid, so fucking, you’re so fucking stupid,” Ian panted against his lips, biting at him with sharp nips of his teeth. “Thought I couldn’t feel you right back, you’re so fucking, you’re so dumb.”

Mickey grinned and bit back, tangling his fingers in Ian’s hair like a drowning man clings to seaweed. “So are you,” he muttered. “Such a dumbass, yanking me back and forth like you did, across the entire goddamn world.”

“I’m sorry,” Ian whispered against his skin, kisses turning gentle, healing, and of course he would be the one to apologize, Mickey thought, of course he’d be the one to put it into words for them, to write spells of compassion just for them two. Mickey wanted to laugh at himself, for thinking otherwise. There was more than one kind of magic.

“I’ll be here,” Mickey promised. “Every night, when I sleep, I’ll be here, until you’re home.”

“I _am_ home,” Ian whispered back.

When he woke, the flesh of his chest ached, but a good ache, not like a gaping wound but like a muscle sighing its accomplishment after a marathon. Mickey smiled, picturing Ian, however many miles away, waking to the same sensation. He found himself thinking of Baba’s voice, directing the feeling toward Ian, as she whispered into his mind words she had never said: “In my mind I will build a home for us from my magic, and you will furnish it with yours, I will wrap my soul around you like a blanket in the dark of winter, and I will feed my heart to you in small bitter bites so that I can live inside you, both warming and warmed.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Catherynne M. Valente's beautiful book Deathless, which is not at all similar to this story in terms of storyline or characterization, but it influenced it a lot with its tone and themes. If you enjoy lush prose and Russian/Eastern European fairy tales, I definitely recommend it.


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